Virtualization Products and Technologies

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is one of the many Optimized Desktop scenarios offered by Microsoft to help organizations optimize their IT infrastructure. It is a comprehensive set of Microsoft and partner technology, enabling centralization of desktops, applications and data. This cost-effective offering provides Enterprise IT with integrated management of physical, virtual and session based desktops, centralization of user data, and improved application delivery. End users benefit from a rich remote experience, highly secure and flexible access to their information and increased business continuity. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure benefits non-mobile workers in enterprises that have sophisticated and mature IT departments. It is best suited for contract and offshore workers, users who need access to corporate desktops and applications, and for users that work from home occasionally and whose primary desktop is covered by a corporate license.

Key benefits of VDI include:

• Offers improved flexibility and desktop location independence, enhancing work scenarios such as work from home and hot-desking
• Facilitates improved business continuity through data centralization
• Provides integrated management of physical, virtual and session-based desktops, including non-Microsoft infrastructure

Microsoft VDI combines leading-edge virtualization technology with flexible, innovative licensing. Offering an excellent combination of performance and price, Microsoft VDI provides:

• A scalable, stable and high-performance hypervisor (Hyper-V Server or Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V ) that hosts virtual desktops
• An integrated management suite, Microsoft System Center, that allows IT to manage physical, virtual and session based desktops from a single console
• Application virtualization technology that enables dynamic delivery of applications to a user’s virtual desktop rather than installing applications as part of the virtual desktop image
• A cost-effective infrastructure platform, Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services, which allows VDI users to enjoy a rich end user experience and includes a basic connection broker for personal and pooled virtual desktops
• A licensing option, Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop, to enable customers to license copies of Windows Vista running on servers

As a leading client-hosted desktop virtualization technology, Microsoft Virtual PC has been in the market for over five years. Virtual PC lets you create separate virtual machines on your Windows desktop—each of which virtualizes the hardware of a complete physical computer—and switch between them as easily as switching applications—with a mouse click.

• Runs operating systems such as MS-DOS, Windows, and OS/2
• Supports multiple operating systems, whether for tech support, legacy application support, training, or consolidating physical computers

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization is an integral tool in the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, a dynamic solution available to Software Assurance customers that helps reduce application deployment costs, enable delivery of applications as services, and better manage and control enterprise desktop environments.

Virtual PC and MED-V Together

Together, Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V, formerly Kidaro) with Virtual PC offers an excellent client-hosted desktop virtualization solution.

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) adds four additional components on top of Virtual PC to enable enterprise deployment of desktop virtualization:

• Serves as a virtual image repository and delivery system for creating, testing, delivering, and updating virtual images
• Provides centralized management and monitoring for the complete management of the virtual machine life cycle
• Enables usage policy and data transfer control through an endpoint agent that enforces usage policies for the virtual machine
• Offers a seamless end-user experience with application shortcuts published to the user's start menu

With Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services (RDS), Microsoft is progressing in its vision to provide the best virtualization platform for accelerating and extending desktop and application deployments from the data center to any device. In addition to the traditional presentation virtualization scenario (formerly known as “Terminal Services”), Remote Desktop Services is expanding its role to provide an extensible platform for a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Remote Desktop Services

• Accelerates desktop and application deployment with Microsoft presentation and desktop virtualization technologies
• Helps secure data and applications by removing applications and data from the desktop
• Increases remote worker efficiency enabling access to rich applications both from a web page and seamlessly integrated with a local desktop